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Feb 1, 2006

"So I'm Speaking at this Conference"

Jackey Backman It’s great, lots of people lots of energy.

One of the break out sessions I’m teaching is all about “how to deal with people you don’t like” or something like that.

Great topic, big draw, lots of people in this one. It seems that there’s a whole bunch of you out there that are working with people you simply can’t stand. In addition the consensus from the conference is that the reason you can’t stand them is because these people that you can’t stand, in someway disrespect you or push you around, or take advantage of you, something like that, you get the idea.

Anyhow so with that said, what I hear as an expert in interpersonal communications isn’t that you have “mean, nasty or rude” people in your life (Hello just to be clear mean, nasty, rude people try to get into everybody’s life) and you can’t stand them.

What I hear is ….

“Jackey, by not creating personal boundaries on how people can interact with me I’ve taught them that they can treat me anyway they’d like. Please teach me about boundaries so that I can be strong and self-sufficient. I’m tired of feeling like a helpless victim at the mercy of some loud mouth with an attitude problem”

Cool?

Now to my dismay apparently some people at the conference weren’t saying what I heard at all. They were saying something more like this:

“Jackey how can I make the mean, nasty or rude person be nicer, gentler, kinder, or simply just vanish off the face of the earth without me having to do anything differently then what I currently do. Which is nothing, with the exception of whine and complain behind their backs. This in turn creates more internal dysfunction at my work place and feeds into the already existing negativity. Then usually I’ll go home and complain to my beautiful significant other that is always willing to hear about my hardships and my absolute helplessness in dealing with interpersonal challenges in my life”

If this describes you…

Then what you need to know right now is I cannot help you. Stop reading now, and unsubscribe to this newsletter, just scroll down to the bottom and unsubscribe!

BUT if you happen to be the one that I heard, you know the person that can recognize that sometimes creating boundaries can be tough for all kinds of reasons including, we weren’t taught how to, we feel intimidated or maybe we just don’t know how to create them well the remainder of this article is for you.

So read on...

Creating boundaries is something that did not come easily to me. I realize now that I’m not alone. At the time that I discovered I had challenges with boundaries…well I didn’t even know what a boundary was.

What I did know was that I had a complete emotional breakdown because I just couldn’t deal with everything and everybody I had in my life. All I would do was complain and find things to criticize about other people. All the while changing absolutely nothing about the way I dealt with people or interacted.

I wish I could tell you that healing was a lickity split quick fix…but it wasn’t.

It took a true willingness to be the best person I could be.

Now some people when they meet me, they have a hard time imagining that I could have had these challenges… but it’s true. And although I have always been quite an extraverted individual that doesn’t mean I had the self-esteem necessary to start creating boundaries. It was my doctor whom first introduced me to the idea of boundaries. He didn’t say much just something like….”Jackey you’ve got to create some personal boundaries”

That was all it took…(well a few months completely immobilized in my home because I had an emotional break down, a lot of reading and a new commitment to personal excellence…but a I assure you, those words were the catalyst).

How did I do it?

There’s plenty I did, but here’s a few things to get you started...

Identify people/relationships in my life that I wasn’t happy with.

This is huge!
I had to realize that I had relationships that although they were comfortable and safe, they weren’t helping either of us to become the best we could be. Sometimes I recognized that we even brought each other down and fed into each other’s dysfunction.

At work, well I realized there were people that I felt intimidated around, as well as people that wouldn’t respect what I required from them in order to my job well.
The relationships I kept, I had to “start fresh”

This is Huge! (Did I just say that!)? (I say “kept” because there were several relationships I let go of including a husband, and a dear and sweet friend whom I love very much to this day)
At work, well I sucked it up, put my emotions in check and as gently as possible (now you’ve got to remember being “gentle” is something I’m still learning to perfect) I approached the people I was having difficulties with and told them so. Now I didn’t go running up to them telling them how horrible they were and use a lot of “you” you you language. Instead I,

a) Decided how I wanted to be treated. (Instead of always thinking about how I didn’t want to be treated –that in itself is huge)
b) Accepted that I was the one in the past, that allowed them to treat me otherwise.
c) Told them how I would like to be treated.

Here’s an example of how it might sound “Bob, I realize that I’ve never talked to you about this before, but it is really important for me to let you know that when you come around my desk insisting to speak with me while I’m on a phone call, I’m not going to be available for you until I’m done with the call. I’m just not able to give the customer, you or myself the respect and attention required. In the future please wait a few moments until I’m off the phone before you start speaking with me. Better yet just leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m available.
Determine if I wanted to keep them or not.

After the first round of deciding for whatever reason that the relationship would continue, and then following step 2, I had to reassess if in fact it was worth keeping.

At work, well what happened is people started to treat me the way I wanted to be treated. Sure there were a couple of people that had some choice names for me… but they treated me the way I wanted them to and for the most part left me alone.

Eventually I realized that I just didn’t really fit into the company I was with. It seemed that there were a lot of mean, nasty, rude people working there, and since I wasn’t one of them well I moved on!